by Kristen Mae
“I didn’t tell anyone. His mom was my mom’s best friend. They’d grown up together. I know I should have told, but…I don’t know, I just…didn’t. I think I’d told him so many times that I liked it, so maybe…ugh, maybe he would tell them I’d participated, right? But the weird thing is, he never told me not to tell, not like those stories about the creepy Chester Molester telling the kid not to say anything. It’s like he knew I was too weak to stand up for myself.” A tear broke over the edge of my lower lid and slid down my cheek.
I expected Claire to say something, but she only waited.
“Summer ended, and they moved across town. I hardly saw him after that. There’d be get-togethers though, barbeques, parties, and he’d be there watching me. He’d try to get me alone. I’d hold my pee all day to avoid going to the bathroom—I was sure he’d follow me in there. But I grew up and saw him less and less. I learned in school that what he had done was wrong, that it wasn’t my fault. But I still didn’t tell.” Why didn’t I tell?
My mouth had gone cotton-dry. I cleared my throat. “When I was fifteen, I liked to cut through the woods to get to and from school. My mom didn’t want me to—she told me there could be…murderers out there.” My heart had slowed down a little while I got into my story, but now it picked back up again. Claire’s eyes were wide, but she kept hold of my hands.
“I was so quiet and shy. I didn’t want to walk with the other girls. They were perfect and popular, and they picked on me with my violin and books and secondhand clothes.”
I gulped, scared of what I knew was coming. “And then one day on my way home after school, he was just…there in the woods, boom. I remember how, right before I noticed him, a flock of birds lifted into the air all at once. The shadows they made on the ground, the sound of all those wings flapping in unison…that’s always stuck with me. It’s like the birds knew it was time to get the fuck out of there.” I chuckled at this, but the sound came out tight and ugly. “So there he was, standing right in front of me after all those years of me not seeing him. And he had this…puppy.”
Claire’s head tipped back in understanding.
“I was terrified and angry and I couldn’t stop shaking but he acted like he wanted to make amends. He smiled a lot and kept asking if I wanted to pet the puppy. He tied it to a tree and gave me treats to make him do tricks. It was cute. He seemed so genuine, so intent on earning my forgiveness. And so many years had passed. He was in his mid-twenties by then, a grown man, working as a groundskeeper for the church down the road. He showed me his big ring of keys and everything, this huge round hoop on his belt loop, you know? He was so proud.”
My heart thundered so loud in my ears I thought I might have another panic attack. I wondered if I was going too far, saying too much, but I couldn’t stop now—the words were heaving and burping inside me like lava trying to erupt. There would be no more stuffing of feelings into jars. Not now.
“I’m not sure if he had always planned to come after me or if he took my forgiveness as…permission. But he tried to kiss me, and when I went to pull away, that’s when things got…bad.”
Bile rose in my esophagus. I swallowed and breathed, swallowed and breathed, until it finally slid back down. Claire squeezed my hands in hers.
“And you know, that weird puppy thing—while he was…on me, like, in the middle of it, the worst part? He’s breathing right in my face, trying to tell me I’d like it if I would just relax—and I look over and there’s this dog, this sweet creature, watching the whole thing and probably wondering what the fuck is happening. He tilts his little head to the side and does this little whimper. Like he knew. He knew that what he was seeing wasn’t right.”
The bile rose again and I had to pause for a long time. The tick-tocking of Claire’s cello clock filled the gaping silence. She waited with her hands tight around mine.
“And here’s the scary part,” I said, almost in a whisper. “While he was…on me, I snapped. Like literally snapped. I heard a noise in my brain and everything. I got ahold of his key ring and snatched the biggest key, one of those long, old-fashioned ones you see in old movies. While he was on me. I still don’t know how I did it. I was so fast, so…precise. I stabbed him. In the eye. With a key. His eyeball fucking popped. Oh Jesus.” I jumped up and began to pace. Claire stood and hugged her arms around herself.
“He was screaming at me, raging, calling me a cunt and a bitch, telling me he was going to fucking kill me. And I believed him.” Somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice warned me that I should not tell this part, that Claire might not want to be my friend anymore if she knew the rest of it, if she knew what I was capable of. But I’d already gone so far, and there were those blue eyes again, peering inside me—I had no choice but to finish. “Yeah, I believed him. So I stabbed him in the other eye. It was easier than the first eye because he was already down. Jesus Christ, there was so much fucking blood.” I said the last part so quickly it sounded like all one word.
I stopped pacing and turned toward Claire, and we stood in the middle of the room facing each other like that for a good minute. Then, slowly, she took my trembling hands in hers again and eased me back down to the rug with her.
“Hazel, it’s okay, you—”
“Rape victims are supposed to want to shower right after their attack. They’re supposed to scrub themselves so long and so hard that they scrape away layers of skin. But, me—my hands, chest, face, clothes, everything—everything was soaked in his blood…his brain-blood, not to mention…the other stuff, and I just…lay there on my bed. Why didn’t I want to clean myself, Claire? What the fuck was wrong with me? I didn’t get up until I had to puke. My mom found me on the bathroom floor a couple of hours later, sitting against the wall and staring at the toilet.”
That was most of it. That was enough. Claire still clasped my hands in hers, and we sat in silence for a long, long time. My jaw hurt. My limbs felt hollow.
“This man who did this to you,” Claire finally said, and her voice sounded croaky now too. “Where is he now?”
I didn’t have much left in the way of words and it was a few moments before I could answer her. “Dead.”
Every person I had ever told my story to, from the police to doctors to therapists, had responded with something along the lines of “Good,” “He deserved it,” or “You did what you had to do to survive.”
Claire just laid her head on my shoulder and sighed.
EIGHT
“We’re not really supposed to have glass on the beach, but we’ll be careful.” Claire twisted off the top of a berry wine cooler and handed it to me, then looked out toward the grey waves breaking against the shore. It was a brilliant, sizzling day, with only a few feathery clouds to break up the blue of the sky.
I still couldn’t believe she’d listened to my whole crazy story without sprinting away from me as fast as she could. Instead she’d sat there and radiated waves of…awe? Was it awe? All over me. Since then she hadn’t said anything else about what I’d told her, but I kept catching her looking at me with a contemplative expression. She’d catch me catching her and then she’d blink a few times and resume normal conversation. If anyone else had scrutinized me like this, it might’ve bothered me, but somehow Claire didn’t make me feel dissected. It was like she was just processing what I’d told her and wasn’t too embarrassed to look at me while she did it.
I took a sip of my wine cooler and tipped my chin toward the surf where the guys bobbed in the waves on a pair of surfboards. “Mike’s pretty good out there.”
“Yep. He’s from here, though. Grew up surfing. Watch, Oren will be surfing by the end of the day.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me. Oren might be nerdy, but he’s athletic. He used to play hockey.”
“Really? I cannot imagine that at all.”
I laughed. “Me neither.”
Claire scooted herself further under the shade of our umbrella, the kind that lay on its side and acted more like a tent. She
needed the shade, as fair as she was. She wore a beige hipster bikini which, from a distance, made her look like she was naked. I had the feeling she was well aware of that fact.
I wore a one piece with a T-shirt over it.
“Only a few more weeks until we go to Italy,” she said, brushing a stray curl from her face. “Excited?”
I hadn’t been thinking much about Italy since I’d been so anxious, but I nodded anyway. “You?”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh, I’m like, little-kid-over-the-fucking-top thrilled. Except that Mike’s not coming. That sucks. But you’ll be there, so that makes it better.”
“Well, I’m glad I’m an acceptable stand-in.”
“I mean, it could have been James. I’m sorry his mom got sick, but if it were him and not you on top of no Mike coming…god, what a snore fest that would be.” She leaned back on her elbows and pushed her toes into the sand. “I’d be forced to take a studly Italian lover or something, just to keep myself from dying of boredom.”
I laughed. “Yeah, except for that whole pesky being married business.”
She sat up again and looked at me. “I know you probably think I’m joking, but I’m not. Mike and I…have an agreement.”
I felt my forehead scrunch in confusion.
“Maybe that’s more than you wanted to know. Sorry.”
I didn’t want to act too shocked since she was probably messing with me. But when she didn’t crack a smile, I finally said, “So, you mean you guys have…what, like an open marriage?” My skin, already hot from the sun, positively boiled at the thought.
She shrugged. “It sounds more exciting than it is. We agreed right from the beginning that we’d be open to the possibility of not only being with each other forever and ever until we die. That’s all it is. Just a mutual understanding. It’s not like we’re swingers or something.”
“But…both of you agree to this? You’re okay with him sleeping with someone else?” I tried to imagine Oren with another woman and a fiery rage welled up inside me.
“Mike loves me and wants to spend his life with me. I’m very confident of that. The reverse is also true. But…” She shrugged again. “Okay, you’re probably going to think I’m weird, but…I just don’t think people are really meant to be monogamous. I think marriage is a modern social construct that boxes people in, and I think sexuality is something to explore and enjoy—and not necessarily always with the same partner.”
I clamped my teeth together to keep my jaw from sagging open.
“So do you think I’m weird now?”
I didn’t want to say it or even think it, but the idea that Claire, who seemed so good, so generous, so loyal, would go off and fuck some guy other than her husband—it made me angry. How many other men had she already fucked? I felt dirty just knowing about it.
“Well,” I said, “maybe you’ll find a hot Italian stud to fuck your brains out while we’re in Italy and then you can live out all your wildest dreams.” My voice had come out tighter than I’d wanted it to—I was being mean, judgmental. I pushed back the little worm of envy that squirmed in the back of my mind.
She raised her eyebrows at me. “You don’t have to agree with me, Hazel. I am well aware that most people don’t think the way I do.”
I forced a half-smile and looked down at my hands clasped together around my knees. Had they stilled? I released them and held them out in front of me. The tremble wasn’t obvious, but it was there—something I could feel more than see. I clasped my hands again and rested my chin on my knees. My throat had gone tense with the sudden urge to cry.
Claire nodded at my hands. “Still dealing with that, huh?”
I sighed. She was still Claire, and her love life was none of my business. “Yeah. They almost seem to vibrate more since I told you. I thought getting it out might help.”
“Is that why you told me?”
I hesitated for a moment. I wasn’t exactly sure why I’d told her. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, you know I would make it stop for you if I could.”
“I know.”
“Hazel!” Mike strode toward the umbrella with his surfboard under his arm. “It’s your turn!”
I squinted up at him like he was insane. “Yeah, that is not happening, Mike. Sorry.”
Oren was right behind him. They’d left the other board in the sand down by the water. “She doesn’t swim very well,” he said.
“I swim perfectly well, thank you.” I straightened my spine defensively. “It’s just that I need to get used to these big waves.”
“Okay then, go.” Oren gave me a deadpan look, challenging me, but his eyes were playful. “Seriously, Mike’s a great teacher. Did you see me?”
“Uh…” I’d been too busy being horrified by Claire’s sex life to pay attention to what Oren was doing.
Claire reached behind her into one of the two large beach totes she’d stashed under the umbrella. “Sorry, Oren. I was distracting her with my scintillating conversational abilities. Hazel, I brought a life vest for you because I figured you’d be timid after I tried to drown you earlier this week.”
The guys looked at each other in confusion and my ears burned. I hadn’t said anything to Oren about getting wiped out.
“I’m just not made for surfing,” I said quickly. “I’d be bobbing along out there like a…like a log or something.”
Claire passed the vest to me anyway, and I turned it over in my hands. It was bright blue, sleek, and expensive, by the looks of it. Nothing like the big bulky behemoths I was used to seeing, with straps and clasps shooting out every which way.
Mike held his hands up. “Well let’s slow down a minute, here. We start on land. You can handle that much, right?”
Oren sat down next to me and dug around in the cooler for a beer. I felt his hand on my back. “No one’s pressuring you, hon.”
“No, it’s fine.” I felt a little annoyed by Oren’s attempt to ‘rescue’ me. I didn’t want to need steadying all the time as if I were a fragile piece of china. “I’ll at least do the land part of it. I don’t want to be a party pooper.”
Claire clapped her hands. “I’ll be watching and cheering for you!”
I stood with the life vest and followed Mike down the beach to where the other surf board lay in the sand. He laid his down beside it.
“You ready?” he said, rubbing his hands together. His biceps flexed, and I imagined Claire watching from a dark corner while her husband slid his hands over the naked flesh of some other woman. Claire would leer from the shadows, an observer but not a participant, and she’d slip a hand down the front of her underwear and bite her lip as she watched. I snapped my life vest in place and shook my mind clear. “I think I’m ready.”
Mike got straight down to business. “First, get on the board on your belly. Like this.” He lay down on his board with his palms pressed under his shoulders, and I copied him, following along as he moved his arms in a paddling motion.
“Okay, that’s it.” He smiled. “You’ll do a lot of paddling when we get out on the water. Now put your hands like this again, by your shoulders, like before, and push up. Then hop your legs up and get into position.”
I hopped up, imitating him.
“Lower, though. You want a low center of gravity. Yep, there you go.”
I felt a little silly pretending to surf on sand, and I was sweating like a horse thanks to my one-piece bathing suit, T-shirt, and life vest. The exercises worked different muscles than the ones I used when I ran, though. It felt good to exert myself.
“Let’s do it again,” he said, dropping to his board. We rehearsed several more times, and each time, Mike explained more about what I should look for in the right wave and how I should feel the wave start to take over the momentum of the board before I popped up.
Finally, when I thought I couldn’t take the heat anymore, we carried our boards into the water. The sun shone brilliant and powerful overhead, and though the waves were not as strong as on the
day I’d run here with Claire, the water was just as chilly. Children ran and shrieked under the watchful eyes of their parents, and seagulls cawed overhead. Each step I took into the water made me feel smaller, as if the magnitude of the ocean could underscore my insignificance, and as the water ebbed and flowed around me, I was sure I could feel the entire planet pulsing with life beneath me.
We walked out until I was about waist deep. The waves pushed me back a few times, but I willed myself to stay calm. The darkness of the water was scarier than the waves. “Something’s touching my ankle!” I shouted.
Mike turned and grinned at me with mischief in his eyes. “Me too—it’s seaweed.”
God I was an idiot. “Oh. Well, it’s gross.”
At Mike’s direction, I pulled myself onto the board and centered myself as he’d taught me. We floated there for a while, and he kept looking at the waves and saying things like “Oh, maybe this one” and “Nah, that’s not a good one.” I kept wondering how many other women he’d slept with while married to Claire.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Start paddling. Remember, when you feel the wave start to propel you, that’s when you push up.”
I paddled as hard as I could, and when I thought I felt the wave begin to push, I pulled my arms in to hop up. But before I could get my legs beneath me, I tipped the board over and rolled underneath it. I popped up quickly though, thanks to the life vest, and was able to grab onto the board and float with it while I wiped salt water from my eyes, careful not to push out a contact lens. My vision cleared just in time to see Mike fall off his board. He’d had a decent three-second ride.
We walked our boards out into the water to try again. Again I fell. A third time. A fourth. With each fall I became more determined to get up on the board, gritting my teeth in obstinacy. I needed to get the vest off. I wasn’t a great swimmer, but the extra bulk was inhibiting my movements, and besides, the water wasn’t very deep. I floated the board back to shore and removed the vest—which Oren ran down to retrieve, babbling proudly about my fortitude. Then I made my way back out into the water to join Mike.
